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# At the Tretyakov Gallery on Kadashevskaya Embankment, a Touching Exhibition, "Flowers
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/v-tretiakovke-na-kadashiovskoi-naberezhnoi-bez-osobogo-shuma-prokhodit-trogatelnaia-vystavka-tsvety/
- Published: 2026-08-10T12:03:56.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:25:26.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Coming Up, Art, Moscow, Museums

At the Tretyakov Gallery on Kadashevskaya Embankment, a touching exhibition, "Flowers. A Symbol of Beauty", is running without much fuss, devoted entirely to the presence of flowers in Russian art.

It opens with Kramskoy's "Bouquet of Flowers. Phloxes" of 1884, the only pure flower still life in his legacy. Beside it hang little-known still lifes by Levitan and Sofya Kuvshinnikova's "Bouquet of Garden Flowers", never exhibited before. She is the very woman of whom Chekhov wrote "The Grasshopper", which set him at odds with the offended Levitan.

The exposition is built on the principle of a flower, and each petal holds a new hypostasis of flowers in the paintings of Russian artists. From the Peredvizhnik study, where the flower is still a mere detail, to non-objectivity, where the bouquet becomes the basis for an experiment with colour and brushstroke, there are flowers in still life, flowers in landscape, the portrait with flowers, flowers in the interior, flowers in Art Nouveau porcelain and glass, and finally flowers in the photographs of the Tretyakov family.

Some 150 works have been gathered, fully opening up the theme from its very beginning, and not only through widely known names and canvases but also through works that rarely leave the storerooms, for instance the numerous, almost serial interiors of Zhukovsky and the landscapes of Krachkovsky. Krachkovsky was an academic painter of Polish origin, a pupil of Baron Klodt, who in the 1890s took to visiting the Crimea and painted Livadia, Massandra and Oreanda on commissions from the imperial court. At his solo exhibition of 1902 in the halls of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Nicholas II bought several pieces at once, and they went into the collection of the Museum of Emperor Alexander III. An artist who was no great luminary found himself in a moment at a summit of commercial success that many more gifted contemporaries never dreamed of.

Korovin has been given his "Nocturne", Goncharova a whole wall. Part of the works are grouped not by author but by colour: in the still-life room yellow prevails, with blue and violet. The "Jack of Diamonds" is represented by seemingly unlovely thistles, agaves and cacti.

Among what is easy to walk past: Grabar's chrysanthemum still life, incredible in its technical skill, Goncharova's fabric designs for Lamanova, Yelena Bebutova, the solitary Vladimir Yakovlev with a response piece by Irina Zatulovskaya, Lentulov's "Asters", Saryan's "Wisterias", Udaltsov, Osmerkin, Isupov with works from the Vyatka Museum. The keepers and curators have assembled, quite literally, a chrestomathy of important names: Sapunov, Sudeikin, Golovin, Polenova, Yakunchikova-Weber.

Simple chrysanthemums, one would think, yet it is precisely this picture by Igor Grabar that could illustrate the dictionary entry on Divisionism, the scientific method of separating colours. The still life is painted in tempera and pastel, with relief strokes of the Divisionist persuasion; up close the surface dissolves into glints, from afar it gathers into mother-of-pearl, while the yellow flowers in bluish reflections shade into green. The collector Vladimir Girshman paid more for it than Grabar had received for any of his works before.

Or there is Goncharova's self-portrait with lilies, painted in 1907-1908, when the artist had only just moved from the sculpture department to painting, having listened to Larionov, who urged her to abandon form for colour. This work demolishes the salon stereotype of graceful femininity and turns the artist from a tender muse into a toiling creator, and the fragile lilies into a symbol of rebellious avant-garde art.

The exhibition is not loud, but it is rich in impressions and, above all, in acquaintances and discoveries. It has been put together very thoughtfully and ontologically, although in essence it expresses no particular ideas, yet it tells of its theme, the place of flowers in art, to a very high standard. Open until 18 October.

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